In an interesting and insightful social justice video that has been making the rounds on social media, a professor in his lecture room tells a young woman to exit his lecture room and never again to come back, to the amazement of a stunned group of young students.
As the young woman exits the room, out into the wilderness of ignorance, the professor engages his stunned students: “Why are there laws?” he asks his students, still reeling from the unseemly behaviour of the professor.
Then the professor continues: “Was I unfair to your classmate? And why did any of you not protest, stop me, and prevent this injustice?”
More than 80 years ago, in Nazi Germany, during the Holocaust that claimed millions of lives of Jews in gas chambers, the Reverend Martin Niemoller wrote: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
There is something peculiar to be said about Niemoller. He was himself initially a Nazi supporter.
However, his support for the Nazis dramatically changed when he was arrested and locked up in a concentration camp for raising his voice and encouraging political demonstrations when the Nazis sought to take full control of churches, urging them not to support the evils of Nazism.
Explaining the moral lesson behind the story, the professor made allusions that the value of the story was about the inculcation of critical thinking, which is necessary to empower society to stand up against injustice of any sort.
The professor lamented the fact that when he abused his authority by ordering the student to leave his lecture room, no one among the students stood up for her, despite the wrongness of his decision and action to dismiss her.
The church in South Africa, during the dark apartheid years, learnt the invaluable lessons of human solidarity from the utterances of Niemoller — that communities, including the church, are duty-bound to stand up against any form of injustice and harassment.
Influenced by concepts of liberation theology, the church developed the Kairos Document of 1985, a Christian-based document that critiqued and became a theological commentary of the political crisis prevailing in apartheid South Africa, created by the state theology responsible for the creation of the apartheid monster calculated at oppressing black people.
As a result of the state theology contrived by the oppressors, which denied black people their inalienable rights of being first-class citizens in the country of their birth, the church became a centre of the liberation struggle, challenging the apartheid system at every turn.
In part, the document was a response to the national state of emergency imposed by the apartheid regime, which included the total blackout of news critical of the apartheid system, including the apartheid army moving into black townships to use military force to quell black resistance.
The recent political events, which, among others, include the resignation of Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi from parliament, could be a telltale sign that something sinister is brewing in our political scene.
Ndlozi, one of the most senior political operatives within the EFF camp, has not been seeing eye to eye with its combustive leader, Julius Malema.
It is an open secret that the president of the Red Berets is determined, at all costs, to consolidate his leadership as unchallengeable and that he could be perceiving the EFF as his fiefdom.
As things stand, among the leadership cohort, there is presently no one willing to disturb the applecart or have an appetite to challenge Malema’s leadership of the party in and outside EFF conferences.
The professor-student encounter teaches us as a society to be willing to be in solidarity with those who suffer injustice and harassment — that society should stand up for what it believes to be right, even if that means risking life and limb — stand up for justice and the truth.
• Mdhlela is an independent journalist, an Anglican priest, an ex-trade unionist, and former editor of the South African Human Rights Commission journals
